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The Heroism of Being Changed

Hello. Excuse me, I kept my voice back here. Good evening. My name is Maria Straatmann. I'm really happy to be here; it's good to see you all.

This evening I want to talk to you about the general topic of impermanence. Recently, I've been inspired by a poem by Amanda Gorman^[1]. You may remember her as the poet laureate who read her poem, "The Hill We Climb," at the inauguration, the brilliant yellow coat that she wore, and the verve with which she delivered that poem. She's written a book recently called Call Us What We Carry, and in that book is this poem. One of the things that intrigues me is I'm just not sure why she chose the title she did.

Tonight's topic, in response to the poem, considers the intersection of impermanence, intentions, and seeing clearly. What is true now, and how can we be in the presence of what is true now? In this time of uncertainty, how do we meet uncertainty? What does it mean to meet uncertainty in the next place? I've called my talk "The Heroism of Being Changed." If I forget that as I ramble on, please remind me. Wave your hand and say, "Wait a minute, what were we going to talk about? Heroism and being changed."

So, let me start with the poem. The poem is called "Closure."

To begin again isn't to go backwards, but to decide to go. Our story is not a circle carved, but a spiral shed, shaped, spinning, shifting inward and outward ad infinitum, like a lung on the bank of speech. Breathe with us. We disembark both beside and beyond who we were, who we are. It is a return and a departure. We spiral on, pushing up and out, like a growing thing making its form out of earth. In a poem there's no end, just a place where the page glows wide and waiting, like a lifted hand poised and paused. Here is our bond, unbordered by bone. Perhaps love is how it feels to breathe the same air. All we have is time. Is now. Time takes us on. How we are moved says everything about what we are to each other. And what are we to each other, if not everything?

Showing Up in This Moment

"To begin again isn't to go backwards, but to decide to go." It's the same as the meditation instruction. When we find that our mind has wandered away, we say, "Just come back to the breath and begin breathing again." We don't spend a lot of time worrying about how we got there or what the definitions of the thoughts were, or what direction they were going. We just come back and start breathing again. We just come back to the breath. It's the same instruction for everything. We just come back, and we take the next step.

This poem invites us to show up in this moment. Show up in this moment, in these days, in this month, and this year. Show up with these conditions just as we are—not as the person we used to be, not as the person we would like to be, not as our ideal selves, but as this person. This person that is weary or excited, this person in these conditions in this room. Show up this way, and then take a step. Don't worry about how you got here or where you're going to go when you leave here, but who is this person right here?

Our practice is to be aware. To be aware of our state of mind, to be aware of this condition, this experience, this place. We do that in meditation and we do that in our lives. And we notice, "I'm not the person I was yesterday. I'm not the person I was just a few minutes ago. I'm this person." It is to recognize not so much how we've changed, but that this is the person showing up for these conditions. This is the person who has to decide whether to sit here, whether to leave, whether to breathe, whether to not breathe. Well, that's usually not so voluntary! [Laughter]

We want to apply this mindfulness of just how things are, not only in the meditation, but when we get up from meditating and when we take the next step. What life is, what experience is, is not so much our changing what we're going to do next, but that we carry this forward into the next moment. What we decide in this moment, what we do in this moment, what our intentions are in this moment, condition the next moment. It conditions tomorrow; it conditions what happens next. It doesn't determine it.

Recognizing Our Intentions

We come here with our intentions. Some of those intentions are large intentions, some of them are small intentions. Some of them act like motivators, and some of them get in our way. It is about being aware of what our intentions are, occasionally asking ourselves, "What are my intentions here? What is it that I'm doing? Why am I doing this? What is it that's showing up here in this moment?" And keeping in mind how it is that we want to be in the moment—not who we want to be. This mythical self who we want to be is not the person who is here in this moment.

I've always had as the overriding intention in my life to be open-hearted. This is how I want to be. And I realized that that begins with "be open-hearted." It doesn't say anything about becoming open-hearted, and that the beginning of that is "be open." I always thought of being open-hearted as the generosity that I was going to bestow on others, but the first thing I have to do is be open. That was an interesting realization, that the way that I am in this world with you in this moment is what I'm working with. It's wise if I know what that is, and how that fits the intentions that I have—the large intentions and the everyday intentions.

The practice is to show up with our intentions and what those mean: intentions of kindness, of wholesomeness, of skillfulness, and to see, "Is it here now? Am I ready? Am I ready for just this? Oh, I'm not ready. Okay, I know I'm not ready. Well, I'm kind of ready. Well, I'm here." This is what I'm working with. This is what I have. These are the skills I have. What I cultivate comes out of my intentions, and what arises out of my actions now conditions the next moment. That's the next set of conditions I have to work with.

The Container of Experience

Right now, having just sat for 45 minutes, I'm feeling fairly relaxed. Public speaking doesn't frighten me, so that's okay. I have a certain amount of ease with that. I've been kind of relaxed, I've not been worrying. That's the condition I'm bringing into this. But earlier today, that was not necessarily true.

I was out walking this afternoon around this pond in my neighborhood. It's about a quarter mile around the pond, to give you an idea of the size of it; it's not very large. It has lots of koi in it, a couple of ducks, sometimes geese, and sometimes an egret feeding on the fish. This afternoon, a couple had their dog and they were throwing balls out in the middle of the pond so that the dog could run in and chase them. Now, this is a protected pond, and nobody's supposed to wade in it or disturb the fish or the ducks. I'm watching this and I'm thinking, "I should go up and tell that person this is not acceptable. They can't be doing this."

I was feeling all of this ill will and agitation building up in me. I'm walking, and I realized that there was outrage and a sense of injustice that was getting really strong. I thought, "Well now, how can I approach this person?" The thoughts went to, "What's Right Speech^[2] here?" And then I said, "Well, first I better check in and see who is this that's trying to decide this Right Speech."

I decided part of what was happening was that there was this overwhelming feeling that I've been carrying around with me for days around the war in Ukraine. The feeling of the injustice of invasion, and all of the experiences of frustration and helplessness that I've been having, had built up in me, and I was about to take it out on this guy throwing his ball into the water. Recognizing that that was there, that that was the condition of how I've been walking around—my anxiety and sense of helplessness about war—was really useful to see. So I checked, and you know, the fish had all moved away from that end of the pond. The dog wasn't really aggressive, nothing was being hurt. Maybe the appropriate thing for me was not to think of the best thing to do, but to be aware of this container I have that includes my distress over the war in Ukraine. Maybe my time was better spent thinking about what that means for me, how I am reacting to that, and what that condition is leading me to, as opposed to worrying about Right Speech.

Definitely noticing the agitation, the distress, the lack of satisfaction, and asking, "How do I meet that?" Taking all that frustration and releasing it in the direction of somebody else, innocent or not innocent, just might not be the answer.

Making Space for What Is True

At other times, I notice similar things. The other day I woke up after vivid dreams. I don't know if you dream, but I tend to dream when I'm under stress or when something is really moving in me. I was having all the classic anxiety scenarios in my dreams: "I missed my flight! How can I get to Japan?" Who knows why I wanted to go to Japan, but I needed to get there and how was I going to do that? Or, "I have a flat tire," or "I have to get under the car and adjust something." Those kinds of dreams about helplessness.

As I got out of bed, I was aware of that, and I thought about Ukraine. I noticed that the feeling I had was this closed-in feeling. It was very tight, and I actually had a feeling of smallness. It's hard to talk about an attitude of mind like this, but it has to do with a sense of space. I realized I was compressing all of these things and that what was needed was space. I went outside and allowed all those feelings that just seemed like too much to simply be true, out where there was more space for them.

Just be true, not chasing them away. Just giving them a little more space. And in that space, it was easier to see, "Ah, I need to meet this. How can I affect something positive?" But when it was all compressed, it wasn't possible for me. So being aware of the attitude, the mind state, tells me something about this person in these conditions who's trying to live life. It doesn't tell me what to do, but it gives me information so that I see clearly. I see the campaigner, the person who wants to do something. Rather than finding the place where I have to fix something or take out the frustration, there needs to be space to see, "Ah, this is the person that's showing up now. This is what it feels like to be the person who is feeling frustration, helplessness, and sadness."

I don't need to start listing all the reasons that's true, and all the dictators in the world, or whatever feeds into the story. It's just noticing, "Oh, this is the effect. This is the agitation that is here." And knowing the agitation that is here, there is the energy of just allowing what is true to be true.

Catching the Mind State

I don't know if any of you heard Gil's^[3] talk from this morning, but he was actually talking about the Satipatthana Sutta^[4]. This morning he talked about attitude of mind. The learning of what the mind state is and how it feels is a practice. It's not automatic. When I talk about the space seeming small, sometimes that must feel strange to you, but it's only the way that I talk about it. The mind state is not a physical thing like a brain; it's more like a container. I like to think of it as the container in which my experience is taking place. This is the condition. Part of the condition is the energy that I bring into the moment, whether that energy is low energy or high energy, whether I'm feeling compressed or spacious.

When things seem confused, I notice, "Okay, things seem confused. Oh, I don't like confusion. I have to do something about confusion. Why am I confused? Let me get it all organized. I'm going to plan something." Notice the tendency of the mind to want to plan in the state of confusion. Oh, that's interesting. What would it be like if I didn't do that? What if I didn't plan? What if I didn't do that activity? What would be true? What would arise? Am I okay with not knowing what's going to happen next? What does that feel like?

We cultivate this kind of mindfulness in meditation, and we think of it as mindfulness and stillness. Is there any way to get at that stillness when everything is chaotic, when everything feels out of control? How do we realize that moment when we come to the space where we say, "Oh, I see." There's just a moment of ah. It's a moment, if we notice, of ease. There's just a feeling into it that's, "Oh, that's here. Oh, that's here." And just that moment of ease should be registered. "Oh, I noticed. I caught it. Oh, great."

It's rather like when we come back from being lost in thoughts in meditation. We say, "I'm back. Here I am. I am still here. I'm here." And that "I am here" sometimes puts a little ease in the chaos of what's going on. When we recognize it, then it becomes something we know, and it becomes a way of shifting our awareness from whatever it is that we've encountered that we may want to analyze, fix, or change. We say, "Oh, this is what it feels like to be confused." Just that much shift in awareness brings us to a place where we're not rolling around in whatever the emotion is.

How do we not get caught by the state of mind, but instead catch it? So that if we wake up sad, confused, or angry, we can say, "Ah, sadness is here. Hmm, I should be careful about that." Or, "Confusion is here. Oh, you're trying so hard." Or, "Anger is here. Oh, anger is here, wow." I don't have to then list all the reasons I've ever been angry, or list the reasons I've been angry with a specific person. I can develop a relationship to uncertainty. Anger is here, I don't know for sure what's going to happen in the next moment. Confusion is here, I don't know what's going to happen in the next moment.

When we have space for things to be just as they are, we have the freedom to not have to control what happens next. So we aren't caught by whatever it is, we can just say, "Oh, that is here."

Navigating Uncertainty

We are afflicted by uncertainty at every turn. I could go down the long list. There's COVID. Over six million people have died in the world from COVID. Six million people. We've lost people, we've been isolated. Many of us have decision fatigue: "Is this safe? Is this not safe?" There are over 1.7 million refugees from Ukraine in the last 12 days. Wow. Where are all those people? There's inflation and financial insecurity. There's climate change, there's inequality. There is no end to things that we might worry about.

We, as humans, try to protect ourselves against these things. We become ever-vigilant. We become more vigilant and more vigilant, and pretty soon we are little vigilant machines. We're so busy being vigilant we haven't noticed that our hearts have turned down, that we have locked ourselves up, that we're constantly looking with an eye of suspicion. Something we were counting on comes up, somebody says, "Well, I'm not going to be able to make it," and all of a sudden, because we're carrying this suspicion around with us, we think, "Oh, what's this about? Why are you doing this to me?" And suddenly there's this adversary relationship, when it is quite possible something just came up for the other person and there's nothing they could do about it. We don't know. We don't know.

Ajahn Chah^[5] said, "Looking for certainty in that which is not certain, you're bound to suffer." How do we free ourselves of that? How do we find a place of safety without spending all our lives trying to be safe, not letting anything happen, and trying to control the outcome? We look to what our experience has taught us. "We can trust this, we can't trust that. This is safe, that's not safe." We say that with the idea that it's always going to be the same, but it turns out that it's not. The conditions are never the same. They're always changed in some way, just as we're changed in some way. So no amount of planning is going to assure that everything's going to happen just the way we want it to.

It is better to say, "Oh, this is what it's like to be disappointed. Oh, this is what it's like to be disappointed. I feel sad. I feel let down, I feel thwarted," whatever that experience is like. We can look at that experience without saying, "Oh, this is your fault." We don't have to have blame for all the bad things that happen in life. We can say, "Oh, a bad thing has happened. Now what's the next step? What do I do now? How do I approach this now? Where is my intention now?"

One of the ways we do that is by taking advantage of the space between what arises and naming it our own. One of the best instructions somebody ever gave me was to realize that I could name something that was going on and not make it mine, or me. Anger is present, but I'm not angry. I'm not anger. Anger is here. If anger is here, something needs to be done, but it isn't me. I don't have to make it mine and have it be, "Oh, this is an angry person." I can notice, "Okay, the energy is up in my body, adrenaline is running, I want to retort. Well, wait a minute." Okay, I can't do anything about that adrenaline, but knowing that the adrenaline is rushing gives me a moment in which I can remember my intention toward kindness. And I'll say, "Yeah, but I don't feel kind." Okay, not feeling kind is here. I don't like the way that feels, it feels really crummy. But we're not held by it anymore. Once we see it, we can disentangle ourselves from it.

We don't have to push it away. I have a little problem with the instruction to just "let it go," because it feels too much like pushing it away. But if I can say, "Okay, anger is here, and my intention for kindness is here, and they are struggling with one another." Now it's out here. There's space. I'm not in here fighting it, I'm looking at it. I'm saying, "Okay, I see both you guys are here." When you're in that space of discerning the difference between what has arisen and who I am, then we have more freedom to choose the wise next step.

Sometimes when the adrenaline is running through our bodies, the best thing to do is to turn around and wash our hands. Do something that takes care of that energy without responding, without jumping into "What's the wise thing to do here?" but rather taking advantage of the fact that I noticed this is happening. Noticing the feelings becomes a habit of mind. Noticing the mind state becomes a habit of mind, and it begins to show up when you're not looking for it. You start realizing, "Oh, this is happening now. Oh, I see this," instead of "Oh, this is my habit and this is always happening."

The Open Experience of Compassion

Whenever I hear stories about refugees, what comes to mind is a hangover from when I was in grade school. It was the time of the Hungarian Revolution, which gives you a clue of how long ago that was. Two little girls showed up at my school. They did not speak my language. They were extremely exotic—my god, they had their ears pierced, unheard of in 1957 or 1958 in Billings, Montana! Unheard of. These were the most exotic people I'd ever seen, and I was so eager to get to know them and find out about them. I couldn't speak to them, and they were terrified. I remember that look of terror. The two girls, they were sisters, would huddle together, hide from everybody, and look around with suspicion.

Every time I hear about refugees of any kind, I remember those two. I have no idea what happened to them; they were only there a brief time, but they impacted me. They are a condition of my life. They are a condition that this person who's arrived in this place is always affected by. Refugees, any refugee, anybody who's put out unexpectedly, unknowingly. I can't imagine what it would be like to feel like that, but the experience for me is a very open experience. It doesn't leave me with fear and dread. It leaves me more with the feeling of compassion, of "Oh my god, what can I do about this?"

And to recognize that in the midst of the uncertainty and despair is to realize there's this unpleasant thing, and there is this pleasant thing. Both are conditions. The very distress we feel about injustice and inequality, those feelings of "This is not right, this should not be this way," are also in the same room with the feelings of "How can I make this better? What can I do about this?" The intentions that we have toward kindness and compassion and wholeness show up in that moment, if we allow them. If we allow ourselves to see them and not be dragged away by whatever it is that comes up, but rather, "Oh, this is here, and what else is here?"

The Heroism of Being Changed

Words matter. What we name things matters. Uncertainty is just impermanence fully realized. It is not being certain about who we are, but in every moment seeing it freshly. "What's true now? What's true now?" It is to look at change and realize that all the conditions that we've been through have changed us and continue to change us. The new conditions change us. We have to be willing to see, "I'm changed by this. I'm changed by this experience, I'm changed by this knowledge. I'm changed by recognizing who's shown up in this moment in this body. I'm changed by that." And to embrace that change in the sense of just allowing it to be true. Just seeing it: "This is how it is. It's like this."

What arises in the moments when the unexpected arises? What happens? I recently took a week when I realized I was really busy trying to make everything happen and asked, "What happens if I don't do all this responsible stuff?" I decided to work a jigsaw puzzle. For four days, that's all I did. I worked a thousand-piece puzzle^[6]—I'm a puzzle fanatic, so that's what came to mind—but what I did was work this puzzle just to see what happens if I don't do all these things. What arises? What do I think? Who is this person here?

What is useful is to realize that almost anything could happen. We don't have to know the outcome. Things don't have to be the way we think they should be. We can't go back to a nonexistent past. We can only access this moment. This person who is here in this moment. We do so with the accumulated wisdom and humility of all the things that we have thought and been in the past, who are not who we are now. As Amanda's poem said, we are both beside and beyond who we were, who we are.

It's always changing. We are the heroes of our everyday. We take the next step into the uncertain with the confidence of seeing clearly and the wisdom of our own intentions.

So those are my thoughts for tonight. I hope it's useful. Do you have any questions or observations I'd be happy to hear?

(Silence)

Closing Reflections

Let me read the poem to you again. "Closure":

To begin again isn't to go backwards, but to decide to go. Our story is not a circle carved, but a spiral shed, shaped, spinning, shifting inward and outward ad infinitum, like a lung on the bank of speech. Breathe with us. We disembark both beside and beyond who we were, who we are. It is a return and a departure. We spiral on, pushing up and out, like a growing thing making its form out of earth. In a poem there is no end, just a place where the page glows wide and waiting, like a lifted hand poised and paused. Here is our bond, unbordered by bone. Perhaps love is how it feels to breathe the same air. All we have is time. Is now. Time takes us on. How we are moved says everything about what we are to each other. And what are we to each other, if not everything?

May you know the peace of uncertainty, the possibilities of uncertainty. May your practice lead you to a place where you can see clearly, so that wisdom is with you always. Thank you.